


I Didn't Know How To Tell You

by orphan_account



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, The Doctor's Daughter - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-22 16:06:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4841795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The first time they met, she saved him. Well, kind of."</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Didn't Know How To Tell You

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to stay as close to canon as possible for this, but I did stray with a couple of things. However, I still think that the events in this could happen without changing the overall Doctor Who arch too much.

The first time they met, she saved him. Well, kind of. Mostly. The Doctor would like to think that he hadn’t needed to be saved, that she was just being heroic, but he got shouted down about this later and so he tells people that she saved his life.

The Weeping Angel had him backed into a corner (and he really didn’t want to have to visit the 1960s again, at least not against his will), but his eyes were starting to burn and his limbs were starting to twitch and he was thinking that he was going to have to blink. But she came and somewhat curiously asked him why he wouldn’t take his eyes off the crying angel statue and he shouted at her to stare at the angel and not to blink. She did, somewhat bemused, while he shook his arms out and blinked until his eyes became wet again.

But she blinked, so he had had to take care of the angel and then figure out where she had gone so he could pick her up in the TARDIS (1929). But naturally, that was also the year that Zygons ran all over the London countryside trying to take over the earth. They had a hell of a good time saving the world, and when they were done he took her to a bookshop and let her choose anything she wanted because she had said how much she loved books. She had also told him her name was Lane, she was seventeen years old and had lived in London her whole life.

Afterward he had dropped her off at her flat and she had stopped him before he could leave.

“We’ll do this again, sometime, right? You said that the TARDIS could travel to other planets, as well as in time.”

“Sometime?” There was something familiar about this girl, but he couldn’t place what it was.

“Like…next Sunday? I’m free all day.” She had beamed at him, and the familiarity was so unsettling that he had agreed without a second thought. Still beaming and clutching her three new books, she had entered the flat and waved at him from the window. She was still watching when the TARDIS disappeared.  
\---

The Doctor picked her up next Sunday as he had promised, and he had taken her to New Earth and they had saved it from Cybermen and he had taken her back to the bookstore to celebrate and she had gotten him an espresso which was nasty and bitter and _not_ delicious at all. She had laughed at the look on his face and once again there was that _familiarity_ that he just couldn’t place. It made his head hurt a little bit, and maybe he would have said “No more trips,” but the TARDIS liked her in a way that she only liked very few people.

There were three people that the TARDIS loved most in the universe; The Doctor, Rose, and River. And now this unassuming teenager who always had a book in her pocket or her purse and made the Doctor drink espresso without sugar or cream. The TARDIS loved Lane, and the Doctor had no idea why. So whenever she had a couple of hours free and Amy and Rory were somewhere else he would pick her up and they would travel time and space together. He would sneak peeks at her all the while to try and figure out how he knew her.

Then Amy and Rory were sent back by angels, and the Doctor was alone. It hurt too much to go see River…she was so much like Amy in so many ways. For years he was alone in his grief, not just for Amy and Rory, but for the others who had come before them. Donna Noble, who would never remember him, Rose Tyler, who was trapped in another universe, Captain Jack Harkness, who had Torchwood to run and no time to see his old friend.

And then, he met Clara. His impossible girl, who laughed and joked and made him take her back to see the ancient Romans and the building of the pyramids and the battlefields of World War l AND ll so she could teach about them better. So, after not seeing Lane for years (at least for him, it had only been months for her), he dusted off his coat, straightened his bowtie, and shoved a book through her mailbox with an invitation to meet him at her favorite coffee shop next Wednesday at two o’clock.

She showed up at two on the dot, flushed and smiling, her dark, curly hair escaping its ponytail. They wasted no time in piling into the TARDIS. He taught Lane to fly the TARDIS this trip, and she took to it with an ease that almost made the Doctor jealous. Only almost, though. At least, that’s what he kept telling himself.

When the trip (that lasted a week and a half and an hour at the same time) was over, she had told him, “I’m turning eighteen next Friday. Mum’s going to be home for once, and I’m making angel food cake. You should come for a slice.”

She didn’t wait for him to answer before saying, “I’ll let Mum know you’re coming.” She went inside, tripping on the doormat in the process.  
\---

The Doctor didn’t wait an entire four days in real time. The TARDIS behaved for once, and he landed exactly when and where he wanted too, giving him enough time to dig through the library to find a suitable book to give her. He decided on a book of fairy tales, tucked it in his coat pocket, stepped out of the TARDIS, and knocked on the door.  
He leaned back on his heels as he waited, and as the door open, he thrust out the book, crying “Happy Birthday!”

But the words died in his throat, because he was staring into a familiar face. A face that wasn’t Lane’s.

“Mum? Who is it?” Lane came around the corner and brightened. “Edward!”

“Edward? Who’s Edward?” the Doctor said just as River Song exclaimed “This is Edward?”

Lane shrugged, “Well, I couldn’t exactly tell my Mum that I invited a man called “The Doctor” over for birthday cake, could I? I had to come up with a name.”

“I look nothing like an Edward!” The Doctor exclaimed, slightly offended. River grabbed his arm. “Doctor, come on.”

“You know him, Mum?” Lane followed the Doctor down the hall (who was being dragged by River). “How?”

“It’s a long story,” They said at once, before glaring at each other.

“Lane, why don’t you go and cut the cake?” River said, breaking the awkward silence. “The Doctor and I have some catching up to do.”

Lane, looking less and less happy by the second turned and hurried down a short hallway while River yanked the Doctor into a bedroom.

“You did this on purpose, I know you did!” River snarled, twirling around to face him. “You knew who she was! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know she was your daughter!” The Doctor said. “We just kind of…happened to meet.”

“I don’t believe that for a second!” River was getting red in the face. “Nothing ever just _happens_ with you!”

Now the Doctor was starting to get angry. “But it did this time! There was a Weeping Angel and Zygons and a bookshop. How was I supposed to know she was your daughter?”

“You really couldn’t see it, could you?” River’s voice had suddenly got soft. “You stupid, dense man.”

“See what?”

“She’s not just my daughter.” River was looking at the ceiling. “She’s yours, too.”

Now the Doctor knew why Lane looked familiar. She had River’s curvy figure and her curly hair with his dark color. Her eyes that had first belonged to one Amelia Pond, and Rory’s chin. Her familiarity had been nagging at him for months, and this was why.

“Mum?” Both River and the Doctor turned to see Lane standing in the still open door, her face slightly pale. “Is it true? Is this…my Dad?”

“Yes, sweetie. He is.”

“But…but you said Dad’s name was John Smith. And that he left before I was born.”

“His real name is the Doctor. John Smith is the name he uses when he needs to seem more human.” River’s voice sounded sad. “This wasn’t how I wanted you to find out.”

But Lane’s eyes were already filling with tears. She was out the front door before either River or the Doctor could stop her.  
___

River and the Doctor found themselves in the kitchen an hour later, flipping through their notebooks. “Have we done the ruins of Quizel yet?”

“No…” River flipped a page. “What about the storm gods?”

“Oh, yes.” The Doctor grinned. “The lucky lightning strike. Oh, you were so mad…”

They were silent for a moment; the only sound the pattering of the rain that had started about twenty minutes before.

“When did she… _happen_?” The Doctor asked quietly.

“When did who happen?” River forced a casual tone, but she stopped flipping through the notebook.

“Lane.”

“Oh.” River kept her eyes glued firmly to the page. “The night of our wedding.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was going to,” she admitted, “the next time I saw you. I wanted to do it in person. But the next time I saw you it was after she was born…well, you were younger. And each time you got younger and younger, and by the time I was crawling out of the Byzantium you were newly regenerated and had been traveling with Amy for a week at the most and Lane was fifteen. Then there was Manhattan and that was no time to tell you that you had a teenage daughter.”

She took a deep breath, like she was holding in tears. “And every time after that I had kept it in for so long I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. And you were half-mad with grief anyways, and I kept telling myself that there would be a better time to tell you, and there never was.”

River wiped away a tear, and the hard little bit in the Doctor that wanted to hate River splintered into pieces. He didn’t think he had ever seen her cry before. He reached across the table for her hand just as the door opened. River wiped another tear and stood up. Lane came into the kitchen, dripping wet. She was wearing only a pair of white-and-pink striped socks on her feet, which were sopping wet and muddy. She had left too fast to put on her shoes.

“Doctor, will you give us a minute?” River stood up and wrapped an arm around Lane. “I need to talk to her alone.”  
\---

Lane came into the TARDIS after about an hour had passed, collapsing on one of the chairs.

“So, Mum’s a time traveler.” Her voice was flat.

“Yes.”

“It makes sense.” Lane picked at a loose bit of thread on her pants. “Once, she said she was going to store. She was gone an hour and came back with no groceries and a sunburn. Another time, she had a scar on her arm that she hadn’t had before even though she had been gone for only about twenty minutes. And once she was in the backyard for less than ten minutes and she was in completely different clothes when she came back inside.”

She jumped out of the chair and seized the TARDIS console. “Let’s go somewhere. Anywhere.” She reached for a knob and glared fiercely at the Doctor when he went to stop her. “Don’t argue with me.” She looked so much like River in that moment, from the fierce tilt of her chin to the glint in her eye that the Doctor wondered how he hadn’t seen it before. He stepped back and let her go to work, the TARDIS humming contentedly.

“Doctor?” She asked when they were in the time vortex. She was speaking so quietly that the Doctor had to strain to hear her. “Is it okay if I don’t call you “Dad”? I’ve known you as the Doctor longer than I have as “Dad”, so…”

The Doctor gave his permission and they went out and saved people. But that night, as he sat under the TARDIS floor, he couldn’t stop his mind from spinning. He had a daughter. Again.  
___

Sometimes River joined him and Lane. Sometimes it was just Lane, sometimes it was just River. Once, it was just Lane and River (they had dared to take the TARDIS themselves. without _him_!). But between them and Clara, the ever-present grief began to fade somewhat.

And then, one day, Lane jumped into the TARDIS. “Mum’s going to be gone for a week. She got a job on sometime in the future. The entire planet is a library!” She gave a little twirl and laughed. “It sounded amazing!” She stopped twirling and frowned. “But Mum said that underage people aren’t allowed, so I couldn’t go. So I made a list of bookshops and libraries all around the world that I want to visit.” She pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket. “And we’re going to all of them!”

She apparently didn’t notice the way the Doctor’s face went still. His stomach twisting, he joined her at the console.  
\---

When he next visited her, she flew at him, sobbing and pounding her fists against her chest. “YOU KNEW! I KNOW YOU KNEW!” She thrust a piece of paper at his chest.  
Regretfully, Dr. River Song has perished on site…

The rest of the words blurred in the Doctor’s vision. Lane was still sobbing, but he noticed something on her wrist. A vortex manipulator. Property of M. P… M. P. Melody Pond. River was truly gone. He felt like sobbing a little bit too, but inside he grabbed Lane and drew her to him. She sobbed into his chest, gripping his coat.

He took her to her room on the TARDIS and she curled up on her bed. She wasn’t crying anymore, but she had a strange, empty look on her face. The Doctor left the room, but as he went to close the door, he heard her whisper,

“Goodnight, Dad.”  
\---  
_Tick Tock goes the clock_  
_We laughed at Fate and mourned her_  
_Tick Tock goes the clock_  
_Even for the Doctor_


End file.
